What are alternatives to “delegates” for passing data between controllers?

Question

Are there alternatives to \"delegates\" to pass back data from one controller to another?

Just seems like a lot of work implementing a delegate just to pass back the

Answer 1

Delegates aren't a lot of work, aren't a lot of code, and are commonly the most appropriate solution. In my opinion they're neither difficult nor messy.

Five lines of code in the child's interface. Before @interface:

@protocol MyUsefulDelegate 
- (void)infoReturned:(id)objectReturned;
@end

Inside @interface:

id  muDelegate;

After @inteface's @end:

@property (assign) id  muDelegate;

One line of code in the child's implementation:

[[self muDelegate] infoReturned:yourReturnObject];

One addition to an existing line of code in the parent's interface:

@interface YourParentViewController : UIViewController 

Three lines of code in the parent's implementation. Somewhere before you call the child:

[childVC setMuDelegate:self];

Anywhere in the implementation:

- (void)infoReturned:(id)objectReturned {
    // Do something with the returned value here
}

A total of nine lines of code, one of which is merely an addition to an existing line of code and one of which is a closing curly brace.

It's not as simple as a returning a value from a local method, say, but once you're used to the pattern it's super straightforward, and it has the power of allowing you do do all kinds of more complex stuff.